How to keep the Gamemaster from asking you to roll dice.
Your dice want to kill you Role play instead.
One of the things that I have noticed as a player is that most of the time is that my Dice is trying to kill me. Mathematically the dice are really not trying to kill me but years of really bad rolls have me thinking otherwise. So what does a player like me do to survive an environment where the dice are conspiring to end my character? I avoid touching my dice as much as I can.
Let's face it mathematically every time you touch the dice there is a chance that you're going to fail. Not touching the dice is centrally safer than rolling them. So how do we keep the GM from asking you to roll the dice? We Role Play. We entertain the GM and the rest of the players.
So I was invited to a game of Shadowrun where I had the chance to actually play instead of Gamemastering. I went through the process of building a character that sounded like fun. Wolf shaman who lost his pack in a botched run vs Aztechology. He was dominant personality and the typical alpha male (Very different from how I am in real life). Some good combat spells mixed with a Korean Gum (Korean version of Katana) and an Aries predator version 1 (Yes I am old school) .
I walk into the game session and noticed that all the other players have been in this campaign for over two years. And the GM had been very nice to them. Military grade combat armor , Tactical lasers rifles and a mage who could vaporize me in a flick of a finger. I was totally outclassed and with how I roll my dice on average I should avoid touching my dice the entire night.
The problem was that I already told the game master that I was playing an alpha male type character. How in the world am I going to survive trying to pay in character in a group that has me out gunned? I Role played. I told myself that Frank (My Wolf shaman) would make sure that he was in charge first thing.
Gameplay was started off like one would expect with the normal amount of "What did you do since the last mission" and "How did you spend your Karam points?" We were told the mission and started right away. From here I spotted my chance. One of the players had his character do something that was a bit on the "Unprofessional side" Something that you would expect from a murder hobo. Knowing this might be the last moment of this PCs life I told the GM "I Grab hold of Derrick and throw him up against the wall by the next and hold my knife under his neck and said with a growl through my teeth " The moment your incompetence becomes more dangerous to the mission then the guard you just killed I will personally rip your esophagus out with my teeth. " (I looked over to the GM and said "My eyes are glowing Red" .... and waited ... as the GM started to think
"Derrick he scares you "
I had successfully avoided death by roleplaying past it. In a fair fight, I had no chance vs this street samurai who is cybered to all hell. I had convinced the player that I was dangerous by roleplaying like I was. at any moment the GM asked me to pick up my dice it would be obvious that I was not as badass as I was acting.
Before you think I had carefully planned the whole encounter. Most of this is hindsight many years later. After some careful thought, I have created a list to avoid the Dice killing you.
#1 Be entertaining The gamemaster is more likely to allow your avoidance of touching the dice if it's going to make a fun story later. As long as everyone is enjoying the show She is more than likely to forget to ask for a roll . (I think this is how I was able to pull off the situation above )
#2 Don't overreach As a Gamemaster, it's a knee-jerk reaction to ask for a Role the second the player is asking for something that there is even a basic chance of failure. So when trying to avoid the dice try to things that would seem out of the ordinary.
#3 Use backstory Gamemasters love backstory. In the case above I used the backstory of losing my pack and being an alpha male to dictate my actions. This also seems to be more of a way to distract the GM from asking for dice rolls.
#4 Don't Touch the dice Like you want to remind the GM that you should be rolling skill checks. The second you touch the dice the GM is going to remember to ask you to make a skill check
#5 Foreshadowing and Build a case of why you don't need to roll This is a great tool even for GMs. Say you are wanting to break into a safe but your lock picking skill sucks. Before you even have a chance to look at the safe.
Let the GM know that you are reading up on cracking safes. Go shopping for the right kind of drill bits. Let the GM know that you are going to fake being injured to steal a stethoscope from the doctor when they are not looking. All to say that when you have to crack that safe you have built a case so the GM may allow you to open the safe without rolling or at least a decent bonus.
#6 Never fight the GM if they ask you to roll
So that is how you bullshit your away around the dice. So basicly the more you Role play the less those dice have a chance to kill you
